Waimea United Church of Christ

Luke 11:37-54“Unmarked Graves”

Did you
ever ask yourself how you will be remembered? What do you want on your
tombstone? That used to be the logo of the tombstone pizzeria chain on the
mainland. Every time you would order a pizza, you would be reminded of your own
mortality. This made me think that perhaps they put poisoned mushrooms on the
pizza or something!

Jesus went
to go have dinner with a Pharisee. This was not the famous Pharisee Nicodemus,
whom we know because history recorded that meeting favorably for Nicodemus and
Jesus. We still speak his name after two thousand years. Unfortunately, we do
not know the name of this Pharisee that invites Jesus to dinner. We
never knew his name. People already in the time of Luke’s writing of this
gospel had already forgotten about this man who had Jesus over for dinner.

Recently
someone posted a picture on Facebook of a pool party I attended in 1978. What
was super interesting to me was that despite my being in a group picture with
dear friends, I had absolutely no remembrance of that pool party. Still today I
can not conjure up even the vaguest of memories. As far as I am concerned I was
never there, except for the fact that there is a picture showing me there.

I mentioned
this to Helen, and she told me about a picture of her at a wedding, and she
could not ever remember who the couple was!

We decide
what is important for us to remember or to put in our journals. When my father
passed away, I opened up his diaries. Yes, I opened up to April 26th,
1962. That was the day that I and my twin brother were born. Guess what? We
were not mentioned. He talked about taking time off from work and other things.
The birth of his two sons did not make it to the journal. I have never really
known what to make of that. My sisters got mentioned, by the way.

Jesus uses
the metaphor that the Pharisee who invited him to dinner is like someone in an
unmarked grave. Last year a family that has a plot out here in our cemetery
asked to bury some remains, some ashes in an urn. I checked the map that showed
all the names of people in the cemetery. According to our records, there was no
one buried in the spot on the plot where the family wanted to bury an urn.

As we moved
the dirt out from that spot, lo and behold, we found an unmarked urn. Somebody
had already been buried there. We looked all over the urn for some kind of
marking, but alas there was none. We did not know what to do. I asked the
family to go back into their own records to see who might it have been. Still,
they were only guessing that it was an aunt who died some thirty-plus years
ago. We simply placed the urn back where we found it. It is still unmarked.

Of course,
the thoughts came to me that night about how incredible it is that someone who
lived their whole life on this planet was now in an unmarked urn. All their
joys and triumphs are now forgotten. All their love and sorrows just nameless
dust. It really saddened me to think about this. Why did they not just scatter
the ashes somewhere if they were not going to put a name on the urn or even
mark the burial spot? I know that it is somebody’s life, but the significance
of that life is completely gone.

Tomorrow is
Memorial Day—a national holiday. This holiday was first started in 1868, three
years after the end of the Civil Way in our country. It was a day to go out and
clean up the cemeteries where the soldiers from the Civil War were buried. It
went from clearing and cleaning to decoration and honoring those that had
fallen in combat.In 1971 (more that a
hundred years later) it was made an official federal holiday. The idea is still
to go out to decorate and remember those who have fallen in service.

This
reminds me of the little boy who asked his pastor on Memorial Day why the flag
in the church was at half-mast. The pastor responded that it was to honor those
who died in service. The little boy asked: “Was it the 8:30am or 10:00 o’clock
service?” That was a killer joke.

As an
aside, most people do not realize it, but on Memorial Day we are supposed to
fly the flag at half-mast. This is the only holiday when all flags are flown at
half-mast.

Getting
back to our text for today, nobody remembers the name of the Pharisee that
invited Jesus to dinner. He is indeed like that unmarked grave. We know that he
lived—and that is all we know. Very sad.

Jesus
mentions others by name in his conversation with the Pharisee. Jesus mentions
Abel from the Book of Genesis and a man named Zechariah. I think most of us
know who Abel was. He was the first man murdered in the history of humankind.
He was killed by his brother Cain.

The other
man, Zechariah, may in fact be the prophet Zechariah from the Old Testament. In
II Chronicles we can read how he was in fact stoned to death in the Temple.
However, some Bible scholars believe that the reference is to something that
happened most recently in the Temple of Jerusalem. Zechariah is a common name,
and it is very possible that such a man was killed just the previous week to
this time when Jesus is asked to go have a meal with this Pharisee.

The reason
that this is significant is that Jesus might have been heading straight into
his own murder when he goes to eat with this man. Religiously motivated murders
were happening all the time. That is how the Pharisees and Sadducees took care
of their rivals in the business of theology. And, we know that even Jesus
eventually is crucified at the hands of these people.

The
question is brought to our hearts now: Would we go and eat with a Pharisee,
anyone for that matter, who is in the habit of murdering people for their
views? Are we willing to put our lives on the line for our faith in that way?
Jesus was. And, he was not shy to argue with those folks either.

The
argument that Jesus had with this one nameless Pharisee ran along this line:
“What is clean?” Jesus, when he comes over to the house to eat, does not wash
his hands right away. In those days this was an expected ritual. It was not for
health reasons, either. The ritual involved only taking a little splash of
water and dabbing the tips of the fingers on a white cloth. That is all.

What good
is that? They did not have the understanding back then of what we have today;
that is, dirty hands can transmit germs and bacteria. The significance of the
dabbing of the fingers relates back to an old Jewish idea that the fingernails
represent death. They believed that the nails were dead. The rest of the body
seemed to be alive, but the hard substance of the nail was to them dead. The
ritualistic cleansing of the finger nails we to in essence wash death from
their hands.

In this
understanding, too, if you killed an animal for your meal, then you would wash
the death from your hands before taking that life back into you for your own
needs. The ritual of the Jews of the day was to remind everyone that they had
blood on their hands.

Jesus takes
this idea and pushes it to a justice issue for the Pharisee. “Yes, you do have
actual blood on your hands! Remember Abel; remember Zechariah! And, Jesus says
to remember the poor through alms giving. If the Pharisee really wants to clean
his hands of death, then he needs to look at how he is causing the starvation
of the poor around him.

I have
blood on my hands. I could scrub with Purell for a month; I would still have
blood on my hands. I swat mosquitoes, roaches, spiders, and all sorts of other
life. I have caught fish and eaten them. I have even run over a chicken in the
church van. My hands are covered with death. I could dab the white cloth in
such a ritual, but that just will not do it.

I also have
death on my hands because of my lifestyle. Just because I did not go out
personally to kill a bovine, I eat the Whopper at Burger King. When our country
drops missiles on other countries, my hands are sullied. When I see a culture
of violence take over our school children’s lives and do nothing about, my
hands are complicit. That is what Jesus is saying to the Pharisee! “Mr.
Pharisee, you still have death on your hands.”

In terms of
our own faith in God and Jesus Christ, when Jesus went to the Cross he did so
for our sins. Yet, in that act of sacrifice comes the Truth that only through
the grace of God can we be saved from death. Dabbing your fingers on a white
cloth before eating will simply lead you to an unmarked grave.

Come to
think of it, Jesus was also put into an unmarked grave. The difference with
Jesus was that he did not stay there. After three days, he got up. He rose
again. Death was finally truly washed away from humanity.

Now on
Memorial Day we go to decorate the graves not just to honor the dead but to
remember that they live now forever with Christ who could not stay in his
unmarked grave.